Witcher 3 - Officially Announced

February 6th, 2013, 09:21

Originally Posted by rune_74
I never had all these huge bug fests that certain posters seemed to have, oh well.

For me, TES games are Chinese water torture of bugs. Death by a thousand cuts. It's these small little things that range from annoyances like quests not clearing your log or quest items remaining stuck in your inventory after they've served their purpose and other little things like that which pile up higher and higher as you play this kind of game for perhaps 100s of hours.

And for those who are tripping over themselves to quip back that 'no games are bug free' I am not asking or expecting that. I'm just asking that they change their ways for example like forgoing a super cool release date (11-11-11) in favor of polish. And after the game is released, paying attention to at least some of the little things and getting them fixed.

I've been buying every TES game since Arena and I have loved all of their games. But in this area of polish, they are hugely lacking and for god's sake they really need to up their game in this department already. It would be like as if their graphics were still at the level of Doom 2. Clearly we would all probably say Skyrim is fun, but for god's sake it's been 20 years can you do better than doom 2 graphics already? that's how i feel about their lack of good polishing.

I'll continue buying the TES games because I really like them in general. But no more day 1 purchases for me and I will not buy their DLC piece-meal anymore. It's going to be bargain bin bundle packs for me unless they change their ways. It's been 20 years of this 'forget about all the little bugs' mentality and its just enough for me now.

-- If I'm right but there is no wife around to acknowledge it, am I still right?

Originally Posted by guenthar
In The Witcher 2 the Story is non-linear but the gameplay is linear. There are different forms of linearity in games and they need distinction in order to have clarity.

Exactly. While TES is almost bordering into "The Sims" territory sometimes, Witcher is still very far off from that type of completetly unlinear experiences, it's a lot more focused when it comes to both exploration and gameplay.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
None of them play the Witcher because they can't identify with the ugly main character and they can't play as Triss.

You can actually play as Triss, if you use the doppler's essence mod and choose her model for yourself. You might want to mention it to your friends. It's for TW1, I don't know if anything like this exists for TW2, because I've never played it. I didn't like Geralt at all, so I morphed him and pretended that it was a different witcher who had nothing to do with him.

But I don't think that the reason is his ugliness. When people say it they mostly mean his character. His appearance sort of "shows" his character very well, and in my opinion it's way too seriously delivered, too emphasized for somebody you're supposed to identify with.

Sounds like a very immersion breaking mod, i mean obviously she will speak with Gertals voice, no? And it won't be reflected in the dialogue or story that it's Triss (or whatever character you choose).

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Also the CDPR cost for developer man-hours might be significantly lower. Not sure how much game programmer and artists time costs companies in Poland, but I imagine it's less than in the US. They may actually not have to make due with as comparatively small a total man-hour budget as one might suspect.

Poland is not populated by slaves. Outsourcing stuff to China because one can pay less to workers (and de facto is supporting slavery) is out of the question.

Also it's a mistake to compare artists, we're not talking about cattle here. Either an artist (that includes programmers) is a genius or is just a mediocre copycat. Give a task to two gfx artists, in this case tell them to make Geralt - you'll receive two different solutions. In USA you'll pay for one that cost less as the game will sell anyway and it'll look great when you tell your greedy CEO you got something cheap. In CDPR, it's not the case, you won't care for the price and will pay for the one that looks better. And then your president in Poland will give TW2 DVD as a gift/national treasure to ambassadors and etc.

Originally Posted by vurt
Sounds like a very immersion breaking mod, i mean obviously she will speak with Gertals voice, no? And it won't be reflected in the dialogue or story that it's Triss (or whatever character you choose).

I used Shani's model and it didn't break the immersion, on the contrary, it created it. For many people it's impossible to seriously identify with a character of an opposite gender. Believe me, mismatched names or voices are a tiny price to pay for a chance to be immersed in the game instead of feeling vaguely distant. And I'm happy that even though game developers don't care, mods like this exist to help some of us out.

If Elel is female, it makes all the sense in the world for her to change her character to female. You can always turn on subtitles so you don't hear the jarring male voice for your character. As a male, I think I might like making out with Triss as Shani

Poland is not populated by slaves. Outsourcing stuff to China because one can pay less to workers (and de facto is supporting slavery) is out of the question.

Also it's a mistake to compare artists, we're not talking about cattle here. Either an artist (that includes programmers) is a genius or is just a mediocre copycat. Give a task to two gfx artists, in this case tell them to make Geralt - you'll receive two different solutions. In USA you'll pay for one that cost less as the game will sell anyway and it'll look great when you tell your greedy CEO you got something cheap. In CDPR, it's not the case, you won't care for the price and will pay for the one that looks better. And then your president in Poland will give TW2 DVD as a gift/national treasure to ambassadors and etc.

So that's what us north americans do, man thanks I was so confused as to why there are no great games out of the states.

Best news since the announcement of TW2 .
TW1 was okay if you exclude the very long loading times but this was fixed early, in the cd there is a "making" video where a programmer shamelessly states that they shipped it while it produced 2000 error logs in the engine . CDPR was too small back then.

I am pre-ordering it .

I am expecting this to be steam free so i will not have to resort to alchemies to play it and all playable characters to be both male and as ugly as possible so women can not "identify" with it and we won't get sexism related posts in official forums

Mounts and sailing boats is in. Also, this will be the last Witcher game.
“Imagine playing a dark fantasy game with the same great nonlinear story as in the previous Witcher titles,” says Badowski, “but now told in a world you can explore freely with no artificial boundaries. The war-ravaged world is so huge that to reach further places you will need to ride a horse or sail a boat to get there.”http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain…k-time-events/

DArtagnan

Originally Posted by rune_74
I was so confused as to why there are no great games out of the states.

???
Will you please explain that part a bit more as I'm not sure what did you mean to say.

I've deliberately skipped the first part of the sentence as I don't think Montreal, although in NA, is part of "the states" - this ain't politics/religion subforum so no need to go into that direction.

In USA you'll pay for one that cost less as the game will sell anyway and it'll look great when you tell your greedy CEO you got something cheap. In CDPR, it's not the case, you won't care for the price and will pay for the one that looks better. And then your president in Poland will give TW2 DVD as a gift/national treasure to ambassadors and etc.

Turns out that when CDPR studio head Adam Badowski said The Witcher 3 would be the last Witcher game, what he really meant was it would be the last game of this trilogy.

"This is the last part of the trilogy, in which there will be a great finale of the story. However, this doesn't mean the end of franchise," CDPR CEO Adam Kicinski told Polish Press Agency (translated by Eurogamer Poland.

"Franchise will be continued."

I think that if TW3 will be successful enough, they┤ll probably use the setting for an open world game where players don┤t play a specific character. Personally I wouldn┤t mind something party based.

Poland is not populated by slaves. Outsourcing stuff to China because one can pay less to workers (and de facto is supporting slavery) is out of the question.

Also it's a mistake to compare artists, we're not talking about cattle here. Either an artist (that includes programmers) is a genius or is just a mediocre copycat. Give a task to two gfx artists, in this case tell them to make Geralt - you'll receive two different solutions. In USA you'll pay for one that cost less as the game will sell anyway and it'll look great when you tell your greedy CEO you got something cheap. In CDPR, it's not the case, you won't care for the price and will pay for the one that looks better. And then your president in Poland will give TW2 DVD as a gift/national treasure to ambassadors and etc.

Where the hell are you pulling that from? I'm referring to the roughly 3:5 cost of living ratio between Warsaw and most US cities which likely informs the salaries involved. How are you getting from that to talking about people like cattle and slave labor? What is wrong with you?

If the salaries in one locale are significantly less then that means that often one can budget more people to spend more time on a project for the same or less than if the salaries were higher. That's not advocating outsourcing, that's speaking to a fact of where they are located now. If you have a problem with salaries in Poland being lower than salaries in the US, I don't really see how that changes what is and isn't true here. They are and because of that expanding staff in a Polish company is likely to be less costly than expanding it in a US company.

All this gets to is that CDPR might not be at quite the same disadvantage in terms of being able to budget a large number of man-hours to a project that it might appear to be to some people. That's not about willingness to fund art or not, its saying that if they only had 2/3 of the total cash on hand to fund development as another company was planning to put into a game that this might not actually equate to less time spent working on it. That they could be wiling to go for broke on a particular project could also come into play, but I really hope they wouldn't burn themselves up over one game because I want these guys to stay in business which requires keeping budgets in check.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
Where the hell are you pulling that from? I'm referring to the roughly 2:3 cost of living ratio between Warsaw and most US cities which likely informs the salaries involved. How are you getting from that to talking about people like cattle and slave labor? What is wrong with you?

You know, almost two years ago I sent CD Projekt an email pleading with them to create an open world RPG. This was right after I had just finished playing The Witcher and felt incredibly impressed.

The TES series had always bored me to tears (with Morrowind, literally!) although I found the Gothic series far more captivating. And I cherished the thought of an open world concept in the hands of talented people like CD Projekt.

I got a reply from Agnieszka Szˇstak a day later thanking me for the feedback.

And now an open world Witcher game…with an open world cyberpunk RPG after that… Happy days!